Arizona Alcohol and Drug Rehab and Treatment

Arizona is the home of many alcohol and drug treatment facilities, including some centers that have been providing services before many areas had even heard of a alcohol and drug treatment center.

The Meadows Institute, in Wickenburg, just north of Phoenix, has been providing residential services for over thirty-five years. Their form of treatment has evolved over these years of services, but can still be characterized as a 12-step/based treatment modality with a blending of psychiatric and medical model treatment as well.

The original owner of Sierra Tucson went to the Meadows and from that experience he concluded that it would be a smart business venture to buy a vacant Dude Ranch and so he did and created Sierra Tucson’s treatment facility, which has changed ownership a few times since its opening approximately twenty-five years ago.

Sierra Tucson became infamous for its treatment horror stories that were exposed during the 2012 Presidential election due to Gov. Romney’s company, CRC Health Corporation now owns the facility. The original owner was part of the Bali Health Spas and casino business. Being a for-profit organization with unlimited financial backing, the centers has attempted to capture profitable treatment for all behavioral problems. They started out as an alcohol and drug treatment program with many of the original staff being lured from the Meadows, but soon they were treatment Eating Disorders, Family Dysfunction, Codependency, Sex Addiction, Gambling Addiction, Eating disorders and any other problems where one could use the term “addiction”.

At the time that Gov. Romney was being accused of not caring for the “average man”, Sierra Tucson was being sued for the wrongful death of the doctor who had been admitted to the facility for depression and suicidal feelings, but, as the lawsuit says, in some bizarre way, the patient was found dead on the Sierra Tucson property, but wasn’t located for two weeks. The family was told that he had left the facility. There were also accusations of sexual harassment and other, less than professional stories about the center.

These stories have been buried in the search engines probably because CRC has enough wealth to create other sites and promote them in an attempt to hush the criticism.

We thought that people looking for treatment in Arizona could read between the lines and get the message that many alcohol and drug treatment centers that are marketed as being the very best, the most professional, with the highest level of integrity or quite different when you are actually living on the campus and receiving treatment. Our job is not to expose the ills of alcohol and drug treatment centers, but to educate our readers so that one can have the awareness that when it comes to treatment centers, there may be more going on behind the scenes than you will ever know. Which, on its own might not be a huge problem, but we have yet to find an effective treatment program that didn’t have impeccable ethics.

There are non-profit treatment centers that are much more effective than these two for-profit examples, but when prospective clients read about the non-profit, they will find that there have been patients that have died and other types of problems that are not uncommon for an alcohol and drug treatment facility, but these non-profits cannon bury their news on the internet and the more wealthy programs may even add to the negative spin on these incidences.

This is the only state where we have given the reader an “out-of-ordinary” slant on their state’s treatment system. It is unique because many treatment centers have migrated to Arizona for his mild winters and the freedom to be less regulated and scrutinized than in many other states. We have found a similar situation in New Mexico, but not as bizarre and blatant as you will find in Arizona.

The point of all of this is two-fold. First, the reader should realize that, to find the truth about treatment centers, you can’t depend on marketing websites, even if they look like they are third-party comments, and secondly, to emphasize that healthcare in America can be the best, but it is often deceptively inferior. Mac has reviewed over 150 programs, including Sierra Tucson, and the Betty Ford Clinic and he will be happy to tell you the real scene about different alcohol and drug facilities. You can reach him at our toll-free number: 888-781-7060.